Growing Pains (13 page)

“I have had tea, thank you.”

“But you have not met my wife.”

He gestured me into the drawing-room with furious authority. A voice, submerged in the vagueness that comes of deafness, called, “John, dear, your tea is getting cold. I’ve sugared it.”

“My dear,” he waited for her to adjust the tin ear-trumpet and close her eyes against the impact of his bellow…“Canadian, my dear!”

His shout must have filled the trumpet to make her realize that I was standing in front of her. He took her hand and held it out, at the same time tapping the side of the trumpet sharply.

Mrs. Reverend Brown winced, her mild, kind eyes smiled into mine, while she prepared for me a cup of tea, lavishly sugared. The Reverend then began to fire statistic questions at me, roaring them in duplicate into the trumpet.

I did not know the population of Ontario, nor how many cases of salmon British Columbia shipped in export each year. He began
to look suspicious, then bellowed his final test watching my face narrowly.

“You have heard my brother, the Reverend Samuel Brown, preach in Chicago?”

“I have never been in Chicago.”

“What! So few cities of importance in America and not know Chicago! Every American should be familiar with such cities as they have.”

“But I do not live in America. I am Canadian.”

“Same thing, same continent!”

Now he
knew
I was an impostor.

“You have finished your tea?”

He rose, took my cup, glanced towards the door.

I rushed back to London, burned the balance of my letters of introduction.

I WENT TO WESTMINSTER
to hunt up my Art School.

I was to become very familiar with Westminster Abbey because the Art School lay just behind it, being housed in the Architectural Museum in Tufton Street. There stood the richly magnificent Abbey stuffed with monumental history, then a flanking of dim, cold cloisters, after that the treed, grassed dignity of Dean’s Yard and then you passed through an archway in a brick wall and were in Tufton Street. Here was the Architectural Museum, a last shred of respectability before Westminster plunged into terrible slum. In the Architectural Museum was housed the Westminster School of Art.

I climbed the Museum’s grimy steps, pushed my shoulder against the heavy swing-door, entered a dark, lofty hall smelling of ossification—cold, deadly, deadly cold.

“Wat’cher wantin’?”

“I am looking for the Westminster School of Art.”

“ ’Ere, but ’olidayin.’ ”

The old janitor thumbed to a door up two steps, muttered, “Orfice” and lighted a gas jet over the door. Down the entire
length of the hall was lying a double row of stone couches, on each of which was stretched a stone figure.

“Who are these?”

“Them is Great Uns, Miss.”

The janitor’s grim, dirty face went proud.

In the office I found Mr. Ford, the Curator, a white-bearded, tall old man, gentle, clean, too lovely for this grim setting. He smiled kindly, pen poised over his figuring.

“Yes?”

“Please, may I join the Art School?”

He reached for his enrolment book, wrote, “Emily Carr, Victoria, B.C… . English?”

“No, Canadian.”

“Ah! Canadian, eh?”

His smile enveloped Canada from East to West, warming me. So few over here accepted Canada. These people called us Colonials, forgot we were British. English colonists had gone out to America with a certain amount of flourish, years and years ago. They had faded into the New World. Later, undesirable not-wanteds had been shipped out to Canada. It was hoped that America would fade them out too—all the west side of the earth was vaguely “America” to England. This courteous old gentleman recognized Canada as herself—as a real, separate place.

“How soon can I start work?”

“As soon as the class rooms open next Monday, Miss Hurry.”

The Museum was lighted when I came out of the Office. A dreary young man in rusty black was drawing in a little black book propped against a stone dove on a shelf, bits of cornices, stone lilies, and saints with their noses worn o?. Why must these people go on, and on, copying, copying fragments of old relics from extinct
churches, and old tombs as though those were the best that
could ever
be, and it would be a sacrilege to beat them? Why didn’t they
want
to out-do the best instead of copying, always copying what had been done?

I walked down the centre of the hall between the rows of stone sofas. I could not see the faces of the “Great Uns.” The crowns of their recumbent heads were towards me. Some had stone hair, some hoods of stone, the heads of some were bald. It chilled one to see their bareness against stone pillows—hands crossed over stone bosoms, feet exactly paired, chipped old noses sticking up from stone faces, uncosy stone robes draping figure and sofa. Except for the Curator, the Westminster Architectural Museum was grim.

Something smelly was very close. The janitor was “shooing” the dreary young man out. He held wide the heavy door, beckoned me and cupped his filthy paw for a tip…

“Closing time!”

Fog was in dirty Tufton Street. I did not put a tip into the dirtier hand. He banged the door after me. Newton expected a tip for every nothing he did or did not do. That janitor was loathsome—my first experience of that type of cockney.

WHEN SCHOOL OPENED
Monday morning at nine sharp I was at the Westminster School of Art. I went first to the Office, enquiring how I was to act. Mr. Ford took me up the broad stairway leading to the balcony off which our class rooms opened. There were two “life” rooms for women. Mr. Ford introduced me to the head student, a woman dour and middle-aged.

“Ever worked from life?” she snapped.

“Only portrait.”

“It is usual for new students to work first in the Antique Class.”

“I have had three years study in antique and still life at the San Francisco School of Art.”

The head student gave a mighty snort, grunted, “Colonial” with great disfavour. She had not the right to place me. Mr. Ford had put me into the Life Class.

“Stars in the West bump pretty hard when they compete with civilized countries!” she said acidly. “Well, Professor will put you where you belong when he returns.”

She proceeded to put numbers on a lot of pieces of paper. The students were about to draw for a place in class. I, being the new student, had the last number and therefore no choice.

AROUND THE MODEL
throne were three rows of easels—low, higher and high.

“Pose!”

The curtains of a little recess parted, out stepped the model and took her place on the throne.

I had dreaded this moment and busied myself preparing my material, then I looked up. Her live beauty swallowed every bit of my shyness. I had never been taught to think of our naked bodies as something beautiful, only as something indecent, something to be hidden. Here was nothing but loveliness…only loveliness—a glad, life-lit body, a woman proud of her profession, proud of her shapely self, regal, illuminated, vital, high-poised above our clothed insignificance.

THE CONFUSION OF
re-assembly after the holidays stilled. Every eye was upon her as she mounted the throne, fell into pose. Every student was tallying her with perfection, summing up balance, poise, spacing, movement, weight, mood. Charcoal began to scrape on paper and canvas…swishing lines, jagged lines, subtle curve, soft smudge. Tremblingly my own hand lifted the charcoal—I was away, lost in the subtlety, the play of line merging into line, curve balancing curve.

“Rest!”

I could not believe the first forty-five minutes had gone. The model broke pose, draped a kimono round herself and sat on the edge of the platform to rest for fifteen minutes. Students too relaxed, moving from easel to easel looking—saying little. No one looked at my work nor spoke to me. I was glad; nevertheless I was chilled by these cold students. In California there was comradeship from the first day and kindliness towards the new student.
I was glad to hear “Pose!,” to see that serene creature, with trembling life in every inch of her, snap back into model queen of the room. Everything was for her. The notice on the outside of the door, “Life Class, Keep Out” was for her. Heat, light, hush—all were for her. Unprotected flesh made us tender, protective, chivalrous. Her beauty delighted the artist in us. The illuminated glow of her flesh made sacred the busy hush as we worked.

At four o’clock the model stepped down from her throne, rubbed tired muscles a little, disappeared behind the curtain, emerged ordinary, a woman clothed shabbily, all the beauty she had lent us hidden.

THE PROFESSOR DID NOT
return to his class for two weeks. I had but one fear during that time—would I be turned back into the Antique Class? His criticisms were gruff, uninspiring; however, he let me stay in the Life Class.

MRS. RADCLIFFE WAS
the aunt of friends of ours at home. They did not give me a letter of introduction but wrote direct to her. They said to me, “Go and see Aunt Marion,” and their faces sparkled at her mention. So, while waiting for school to open, I went.

“I’ve heard all about you from my nieces,” she said and accepted me as you accept a letter from the postman. It may contain good. It may contain bad. There I was. She received me kindly but without demonstration.

Mrs. Radcliffe was a widow with one son who was almost middle-aged, a London lawyer. She was Scotch by birth and raising, had spent her married life in Canada, but by inclination she was pure London through and through. Almost her first question to me was, “And how do you like London?”

“I hate it.”

Her brown, starey eyes popped, grew angry, were hurt as if I had hit her pet pup. She said, “Dear me, dear me!” four times. “London is the most wonderful city in the world, child!”

“It is stuffy, hard and cruel—Canada…is…”

“Canada!” biting the word off sharp, “Canada is crude!”

She spread her hands as if she would drip all memories of Canada from her fingertips.

“London will soon polish Canada off you, smooth you, as your English parents were smooth. You are entitled to that. Make the most of your opportunities in London, child.”

“I am Canadian, I am not English. I do not want Canada polished out of me.”

“Dear me! Dear me!” said Mrs. Radcliffe, shifting the conversation to her Canadian cousins and nieces. “Come to me whenever you want to, child; I am always home on Sunday at tea time.”

We parted, feeling neither warm nor cold towards each other.

I went to Mrs. Radcliffe’s most Sundays. It got to be a habit. She liked me to come and I liked going. Usually I stayed and went with Mrs. Radcliffe and her son, Fred, to Evening Service in Westminster Abbey, then back with them to supper. Son Fred saw me safely home. Fred was nearly twice my age. He was kindly—teased me about Canada. In his mother’s presence he pretended to be all English. She had educated him so—English schools, Cambridge University, taking him back to England as a small boy at the death of her husband. Down deep Fred loved to remember his early boyhood in Canada. If he saw that I was dreary or homesick he would chatter to me about the woods and the Indians.

One night Fred said, “Tell me about the comic old Indian who threw a tombstone overboard at the spot in the sea where his brother was drowned.”

I had been feeling morose at England, homesick for Canada that week. We all started to laugh at the Indian story. Suddenly Fred, looking at me, said, “Now I see why the Indians called you ‘Klee Wyck’—means laughing one, doesn’t it?” After that the Radcliffes always called me “Klee Wyck.”

Mrs. Radcliffe’s Sunday tea parties were always masculine for friends of Fred’s. Mrs. Radcliffe never asked girls; occasionally she had an old lady, a contemporary of her own. She gave out plainly that she intended to share her son’s affections with no woman during her lifetime. She never thought of me as a woman; besides, Fred liked girls stylish and very English. She was not afraid of his liking me.

Mrs. Radcliffe was my English backbone. Her kind, practical strength of character was as a pole to a vine. In all my difficulties I went to her.

Mrs. Radcliffe had a dainty, little old lady friend called Mrs. Denny, who also was a widow with a son a good deal younger than Fred. The two men were warm friends.

Mrs. Denny had three little white curls dangling in front of each ear and wore widow bonnets with long crêpe weepers dangling behind. She was fragile, pink and white, and lowest low Evangelical in religion. Mrs. Radcliffe leaned towards the High Church. The ladies never discussed degrees of ritual, but confined conversation to their sons and to London. Mrs. Denny was as rabid a Londoner as Mrs. Radcliffe. She was as anxious to see “son Ed” happily married before she died, as Mrs. Radcliffe was determined that her son Fred should remain a bachelor. The ladies put their heads together and decided that, with some taming down and brushing up, I would be all right as a wife for Ed Denny. The first thing to be done was so to fill me with London that I would be quite weaned from the crudities of Canada.

Mrs. Denny said to me, “My dear, you stick far too close to that Art School; confinement is telling on your health. Now I tell you what we will do. Every Thursday my daughter Loo and I will
call at your school at noon, take you out to lunch; then we will spend the afternoon exploring London. You will come back to dinner with us and Ed will see you home.”

“But my work, Mrs. Denny!”

“One afternoon a week will make no difference. There is more to be learned in life than Art.”

“Art is what I came over to London for.”

“Who knows, you may love here, may never want to go back to Canada—”

“Oh, I hope not! I would not want that.”

She kissed me, very fondly pinching my cheek. Then her fingers took hold of a little cornelian cross that I wore.

“Don’t wear this as an ornament, child, it savours of R.C.”

She never said “Roman Catholics” out loud, only whispered, “R.C.” Once I saw her take a half-crown from her purse to tip a “Beef-Eater” who had conducted us round the Tower of London. Her hand was half out when the sun glinted on a little cross dangling from his watch chain. She slipped the half-crown back into her purse, substituted a shilling for it.